Dead and Gone (Grave Talker Book 2) Page 5

  “That’s not an answer, and you know it. And you and I both know that I can be trapped in other ways.”

  Mariana threatening my family and friends being the primary incentive to stay put.

  Sarina’s confusion morphed to understanding. “Ah. That makes more sense.”

  Again, not an answer, but I doubted Sarina could give me one.

  “Come on, D,” she instructed, using J’s abbreviation of my name. “You’ve got an archive room to scour.”

  The ABI office appeared like any other federal building: gray cinderblock walls, bad fluorescent lighting, and the stale scent of burnt coffee wafting through the hallways. I didn’t know if this building was the same one I’d been interrogated in before my joyous stay in Hotel Hell or not, but mostly, it felt the same. This entrance being topside didn’t mean anything. It could be the public front while the real work and offices were held elsewhere.

  I saw very few people in the halls, but I felt more behind closed doors, milling about out of sight. Weirdly, that ability hadn’t faded much since the last time I’d been in a building like this one. It seemed that sense had only been muted by the wards in the prison, and time had no hold on it.

  After the events up at Whisper Lake, the normal buzzing I felt every day was dialed up to eleven. I knew where souls were up to a few miles away, and I knew how they were dying if they were close to that. I could feel them like ants on my skin, and that odd sensation hadn’t dimmed too much.

  Funny, I hadn’t realized it earlier. Was that ability going on the fritz? Or was I ignoring it?

  I followed Sarina to a green-gray elevator, and she pressed a floor labeled “B2.”

  Sub-basements. Joy.

  My anxiety of being trapped in this building for the rest of my days ramped up with each floor—all three of them—that we passed, burying me deeper and deeper underground. All the while, Sarina kept chattering on about ID badges and access and where we were going next. I vaguely recalled how to walk as she led me to a caged file room and unearthed a large golden key from her pocket.

  I must have made a noise because Sarina was right in front of me, her small hands digging into the tops of my shoulders.

  “Darby? It’s okay. You don’t have to go in. There is an attendant here who will pull what you need. You aren’t going to be locked in, babe. I swear.”

  I hadn’t thought being in the ABI facility for nine months had changed me at all. Hadn’t contemplated what—if anything—was different about being in prison for such a short time. But now I knew why so many former prisoners vowed to never go back. Because just the thought of being locked up again made me want to run screaming from this building.

  Somehow, I managed to get a lock on my fear. Maybe it was the feeling of Sarina’s soul—which had been a muted buzz before but was now a singing beacon in my brain. Maybe it was the promise in her words, and the knowledge she’d given me on the steps.

  With as much power as you have under your skin, do you really think anyone at any time could trap you?

  No one was going to keep me if I didn’t want to be kept. No one was going to cage me. Not ever again. I wasn’t going to be here forever, just as long as I remembered that I was going to be okay.

  I was.

  Right?

  “I’m okay,” I croaked, swallowing hard as I got my heartrate somewhere in the normal range. “I can go in.” With a few cleansing breaths and a mantra of vile deaths for anyone who would cage me, I managed to peel myself from the cinderblock wall and follow Sarina into the archives cage.

  Farther in the room was a sad gray desk and a man slumped in his chair with his head resting on his fist, sleeping. Complete with a stained button-up shirt, loose tie, and a bad combover, the pitiful-looking records keeper was snoring away at his desk, oblivious in his sleep at our arrival.

  “Kevin,” Sarina called, but he snored on. “Kevin,” she hissed, clunking the desk with her black combat boot.

  Kevin sputtered awake, his mousey-brown combover sliding comically off his forehead to expose the bald patch underneath. His watery blue eyes were bloodshot as he blearily stared up at Sarina. I figured he would be a cranky sort, but he seemed to have a soft spot for my tiny friend.

  “A-Agent Kenzari,” Kevin said, reverence in his every word. He sat up straighter and fiddled with his tie. “How can I help you today?”

  Sarina gave him a practically beatific smile and gestured to me. “Kevin, I want you to meet Darby Adler. She’s working on a mountain of cold cases, and I want you to help her in every way you can.”

  I gave Kevin a truncated wave, but he didn’t even spare me a glance.

  “Absolutely.” Kevin sighed dreamily and propped his head on his hand. “Anything for you.”

  Oh, dear. Poor Kevin was positively smitten and had less than no shot.

  “You’re a doll, Kevin,” Sarina cooed, hamming it up. “Do me an extra favor?”

  “Anything,” he breathed, and it was all I could do not to giggle. Honestly, Kevin was freaking adorable.

  “Keep the cage open? Darby has a thing about small spaces.”

  Kevin gave me an appraising onceover at Sarina’s statement, an expression of kindness sweeping his features before he wiped it away. “No problem.”

  With that, Sarina bid the both of us a quick goodbye, leaving me with the love-struck Kevin who was staring after her like she’d reappear at any moment.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said, doing my best not to make any new enemies while I was here.

  Kevin startled and shot his gaze back to me. “Good to meet you, too. So, they got you on cold case duty. That must suck.”

  I shrugged. “It’s in my skill set, I guess.”

  I mean, who else is going to be able to solve old cases except for someone who can talk to ghosts?

  Kevin’s eyes popped wide, and I guessed that little bit came out of my mouth. Whoops.

  “You’re a grave talker? You’re not that woman who…” Kevin trailed off, his face going positively white.

  Greeeeaaaaat. I had a reputation.

  I fought off the urge to bow. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but I’m nice, I swear. I just want to do this job and not be stuck down here for the rest of forever.” I paused, hearing the words and how they must have sounded to him. “Not that there is anything wrong with being down here, it’s just—”

  Kevin waved away my fumbling explanation. “Don’t worry about it. I get it. A lot of people don’t like being underground. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. It’s good to meet you, Darby. Let’s get you what you need.”

  A few dozen files later, I was elbow-deep in names, birthdates, and gruesome crime scene photos. The photos weren’t the best quality, and it made me miss Jimmy something fierce.

  I had known Jimmy, the best crime scene photographer in the world, since we were kids. Granted, I hadn’t known he was part elf at the time, but it totally explained the long hair he used to get shit over in school. I missed my desk and my office supplies. Missed my process.

  Now I had a rickety chair and plain yellow post-its and a mountain of unruly data.

  The first file was a woman by the name of Donna Sherwood. She’d died in 1995 at the ripe old age of three hundred and seven. Donna could have passed for a soccer mom, her pin-straight blonde bob a thing of beauty. But her identification photo was nothing compared to the gruesome death scene. According to the photos—and the scarcely filled-out reports—Donna had been torn apart by a shifter of some kind. So had her children and husband and family fucking dog. The records vaguely pointed to her being a witch of some kind, but she hadn’t had a coven to speak of.

  The detective work was shit, absolute shit. Time of death hadn’t been established until a week later, and the medical examiner’s paperwork was sloppy and incomplete.

  The next file was for Ferris Laramie, a blood mage that had been found at the bottom of a ravine in 1997. His death had been ruled accidental, but it didn’t add up. He’d h
ad peri-mortem bruising that had been identified but dismissed, and a boatload of cries from his husband about foul play. He, too, wasn’t a member of a coven and didn’t have many friends. Born in the 1550s, Ferris’ records of his life prior to the century he’d died were scant. Just like the one I held in my hands.

  On and on it went. Each person died of unusual or outright violent circumstances, with little evidence, little investigation, and shoddy policework.

  I tried to see if the same investigator had been on all the cases but hit a dead end. I knew it would be too easy to pin it on one lone ABI agent and call it a day.

  I was engrossed in my work when a man’s voice damn near startled me out of my seat.

  “I didn’t realize the fresh meat would be so pretty.”

  Whipping my head up, I spied a frat boy ABI agent, attempting the nonchalant pose of resting his shoulder on the wall. Sandy-blond hair, green eyes, chiseled jaw, the suited man seemed false in almost every way. His face was a mask of feigned innocence, like he hadn’t just been a whole-ass sleaze, while his posture spoke of a fake sort of calm.

  He’d called me fresh meat. Like I was chum in the water and he was the shark.

  “I didn’t realize ABI shitbags would be so sleazy,” I shot back. “Gotta love quippy sexual harassment on my first day. How ever will I survive without it?”

  I rolled my eyes and turned back to my work, fighting off the urge to let him know how many ways I could murder him in this tiny tucked-away corner.

  Stupidly, the douche approached, piercing my bubble like the creepy creep he was. “Oh, don’t be like that. I was just joking.”

  My mouth popped off without consulting my brain, but the bitch did have some really good things to say. “I wasn’t, and I didn’t take it that way. And just so we’re clear, I’ll slit your stupid throat and leave you to bleed out in a dark corner somewhere with exactly zero remorse. Mm-kay, Pumpkin?”

  I probably wouldn’t, but this idiot didn’t know that.

  “They said you were a feisty one, but they have no idea, do they?”

  Did this fucker miss the imminent threat to his life, or was he just stupid? Without much prompting on my part, my hands began to glow, the heat of them a comforting balm to my nerves. I stood slowly from my evil chair, realizing very quickly that he was my height.

  “Quick question there, hoss. Do you think I give two shits what you think about me?”

  His eyes widened as he stared at my glowing hands. I wasn’t a hundred percent on what I could do to a living soul, but he was making me ache to find out.

  “Um, Darby?” Kevin called from the door the agent just vacated. “Agent Kenzari requested that you not kill Agent Easton. She said it was too much paperwork and she was busy.”

  I snorted out an indelicate laugh while both Kevin and Easton stared at me with wide, frightened eyes.

  My glow ramped down, and I met Easton’s gaze. “Lucky you,” I said, my smile positively gleeful as his face went from shocked to ashen. Did I show him all my teeth as I smiled? Maybe. I turned to Kevin, but he cut me off.

  “She said to take your files to the fourth floor, and she’d collect you at the elevator.”

  I nodded, glad for Sarina in all her oracle glory.

  I stacked the files in my arms, leaving both Kevin and Easton in my dust.

  8

  Finding the elevator wasn’t easy. I wasn’t thinking very clearly when Sarina and I had descended to the second basement level, and I couldn’t remember which turn I was supposed to take. It took a few wrong turns and retracing my steps, but finally, I was on my way to the fourth floor.

  With a giant stack of files in my arms, I pressed the appropriate floor button and tried not to drop my quarry. I needed this information—as scant and full of holes as it was—to get anywhere on this case. But as soon as the elevator dinged its arrival at the appropriate floor and the door slowly slid open, all hell broke loose.

  I was barely out of the elevator car before red lights flashed in the hallway. An alarm sounded, and I could have sworn the thing was a World War II movie air-raid siren. And it wasn’t Sarina waiting for me.

  It was Bishop.

  Well, he wasn’t waiting exactly. He was running at me full tilt. Before I could back up, he was grabbing me and yanking me by the arm to a stairwell. I barely held onto the files as I followed him down the concrete steps.

  “What’s going on?” I screamed to be heard over the alarm. But Bishop didn’t deign to answer me. Instead, he jerked the files out of my arms, shoving them into a bag he’d conjured from thin fucking air and shouldering it before snagging my hand. I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered. I could barely hear myself. There was no way I’d have been able to hear him.

  On the second floor, Bishop muscled a door open—a door that didn’t look like it should be there at all. Hidden in the lines of the cinderblock, the secret door seemed to go to nowhere, a blackness so dark it looked like the mouth to Hell. I tried to pull back, but Bishop just yanked me harder after him. When it closed behind us, the alarm went silent. Or maybe since we just went through a door to fucking who knew where, we weren’t in the building anymore.

  Panic threatened to swallow me up, and it was all I could do to keep my feet moving as Bishop pulled me to a place I couldn’t see.

  “Darby?” Bishop called, and it was a struggle to calm my breathing enough to answer him.

  “What?” I hissed, going for bravado rather than blind panic.

  “We were breached—the building. And not just breached. The ABI is under attack.”

  Under attack?

  “What about Sarina? What about the other agents? Did they make it out?” I asked, the hysteria not entirely out of my voice. Okay, I was one high squeak away from a padded cell, but whatever.

  Bishop tightened his grip on my hand and pulled me faster. “She sent me to get you. She’s fine.”

  Even in my fractured state, I still totally caught that he in no way answered my question. “That’s not an answer, La Roux, and you damn well know it.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he muttered under his breath before pulling me to a stop. “Don’t move. Don’t even breathe. Understand?”

  I squeezed his hand in answer, and he let me go. A faint trace of purple magic lit what I hoped were his hands, swirling around and around before flying off his fingers in an arc. The magic exploded against a barrier—a wall, maybe—flowing outward until it found what it was looking for. The magic flowed like water into a crevasse, forming a line that quickly morphed into a rectangle.

  The rectangle began to glow, and with its light, I could make Bishop out in the dim. He lurched forward and grabbed a metal doorknob, cracking the door just enough that he could inspect what was on the other side. When he was satisfied, he reached for me, hauling us both through the door before slamming it shut behind us.

  Springtime heat hit me square in the face as we emerged into a quirky-looking alley. The brick façade was painted with cheerful colors. Murals of children playing and families embracing reminded me of a particular part of Knoxville that I’d visited more than a few times. Peals of giggles echoed off the brick, the sound sending a shockwave of relief through my system. We were safe. I knew this place.

  This was close to the coffee shop where I’d met Shiloh last year.

  There were a few places in Knoxville that were reserved for the arcane world. Areas where the humans didn’t venture on their own without a damn good reason. This was one of those places.

  “We need to move,” Bishop hissed, the giggles not as comforting to him as they were to me. “If we’re caught here, we’re fucked.”

  I couldn’t understand why he, of all people, would be afraid of this neighborhood. Sure, it was full of arcaners, but so were a lot of places. Unless…

  “Please tell me you aren’t on the outs with—”

  “Well, well, well,” a childlike voice called from the mouth of the alley. “What do we have here?”

  Bishop cursed
long and low under his breath. His shoulders seemed to crawl up to his ears as he braced himself, tugging me behind him.

  I stared around Bishop’s shoulder and down the mouth of the alley where what seemed like a little girl was barring our way. She appeared no older than eight, with plaited blonde hair and a schoolgirl’s uniform on her tiny frame. But I knew the crest on her jacket didn’t belong to any school.

  Oh, no.

  No, the little girl at the end of the alley was in no way human, and that crest on her jacket was for her nest, not for a hoity-toity school. She might be hiding her red eyes and needlelike fangs, but that didn’t make her any less dangerous.

  “Darby Adler, what are you doing slumming it with the ABI shitbag? I thought I taught you better than that,” she said, her smile showing a peek of fang.

  At her words, Bishop froze, his head turning slowly to appraise me. I simply shrugged. He knew I’d had an in with nearly every arcane group in the city. Hell, I’d saved their asses more times than I could count.

  And this not-so-little girl? Yeah, she owed me big.

  Ingrid Dubois was the Dubois nest enforcer. To hear her tell it, she’d been a vampire since before the fall of Rome. Personally, it creeped me the fuck out to know that someone had turned a child. Especially since I knew what the spell for turning entailed. But Ingrid didn’t seem to mind her small stature or unassuming appearance.

  She reveled in it.

  Skirting around Bishop, I approached the tiny-yet-deadly vamp, opening an arm for a hug. I usually wasn’t a hugger, but I did so love to freak Bishop out, and me hugging an ancient vampire was sure to send him into a fit.

  “You know how it is, Ing. One day you’re stuck in prison, the next, you’re on the run from an attack. It’s the life, right?”

  Ingrid gave me a little squeeze, careful not to hurt me, and pulled back. “Yeah, that’s half the reason I’m out on patrol.”

  The other half—she didn’t need to tell me—was that she loved making sure her queen was protected, and a general’s place was on the ground.

  “What do you mean?” Bishop broke in, not realizing that Ingrid’s hospitality did not extend to him. Or maybe he did. Bishop knew just from Ingrid’s giggle that he was in deep shit. To me, her laugh was a sign I was in the right place.